Conversions
-Disclaimer: Hasbro owns all recognizable characters, most unrecognizable characters, and no, I'm not profiting off of this.
----
Spike liked Fillydelphia. It was a nice place, very modernized. Paved roadways, buildings reaching out to the heavens. It even had a...

Well.

Thriving isn't quite the appropriate word for it.

Manehatten nearly bordered the badlands, separated by a great swamp and was where Dragons typically touched down in Equestria.

Fillydelphia was where they came to live.

With that in mind, Fillydelphia had the single largest concentration of dragons this far north, including a subsection of the city referred to as "Dragon Town".

He'd visited it before. Bustling, loud, energetic and unruly on the surface. It wasn't until he'd come and gone from the human's world a few times that he recognized what had been bubbling beneath the surface there.

Fear.

Desperation.

Between the stone dragons marking the entrance he could almost smell it, wafting on the wind like ashes lingering from a rain-doused fire. It wasn't strong here, where the two cultures mixed. Deeper though, the buildings got rougher and the lingering oppression more raw.

He didn't know what the source was.

Well, no, he hadn't known what the source was.

He'd trekked north from Baltimare through the freshwater tidal marshes, like countless drakes before him had. It had taken him almost two days of trudging chest deep in mud and muck to reach the same place as a six hour train ride.

Coated in filth, deliriously happy to be free of mosquitoes he'd received a somewhat frosty welcome.

Well, frosty and confused. Recognizing the vested unicorns as police officers had set them backpedaling just a little bit. Asking if there was anyplace he could get cleaned up left them positively perplexed.

Spike hadn't given it any thought. He wished he could keep not giving it any thought.

"I'm sorry, but we don't accept Bits here."

He'd been aimed at Dragon Town, told he could probably get a hotel room for cheap since he was so little.

The third building into Dragon Town and on the left had been a hotel of sorts. The rooms went down instead of up. Plumbing was limited to the first floor only. The dragon stationed at the register was almost wider than he was tall, his scales red and his horns were, of all colors, pink.

"So what do you accept?" Spike could feel his blood pounding behind his eyes. He was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

"Gems." Of course he did. Of course the dragons of Dragon Town would trade in a currency such as gems. Dragon snacks. Which he no longer had any of.

The pounding was almost painful.

"Can I at least use your bathroom?" He was a maturing dragon. His voice did not sound whiny. He did not wheedle.

"Um..." The dragon blinked one eye, then the other. "Why?"

Spike closed his verdant green eyes and pinched his brow above his snout, trying to push back the pain pulsing in his skull.

"C'mon, I'm totally covered in mud. This is disgusting."

The receptionist leaned forward, taking a long, loud sniff and sitting back.

"That's some good quality loam. Scrape as much of that as you can into a bucket and I'll let you use one of the stalls."

"Fine, whatever." Spike hopped up, snagging a key with a tag that said Seven out of the older dragon's claw and rushing to the right into a room marked with symbol of a shower head.

He considered, briefly, just strictly showering and letting his filth drain down the pipes. However as odd as the request was, it wasn't difficult or harmful and he didn't see any reason to burn unnecessary bridges.

Scraped clean and steamed fresh, Spike stepped out of the bathroom almost twenty minutes later.

"You took so long. Do you have the mud?" Spike dropped the bucket on the desk, as well as the key to the bathroom. "Ah, good. Good. Did you want a room for the night?"

"Sorry, no gems." Spike wasn't sure how to respond to that. He'd just had this conversation. With this same dragon. Not half an hour ago.

"Oh. That's too bad. Always sad to see ones like you so little." Little was fine with Spike. Little was better than tunnel vision and every attempt at conscious thought being overwritten like misspelled words in a journal.

Better than shattering everything he could see so he could take offal and junk to forge his horde.

"I'm sure somedragon else will like being covered in this mud though. It really keeps the smell down." And just like that the dulled throbbing behind his eyes regained intensity.

----

It took Spike almost three hours and he went through four hotels before finding one that would rent him a room.

In the pony side of town.

The receptionist had been nice, focused. A couple of slightly more probing questions than was strictly polite for small talk. He'd managed to get her to give him the paper from this morning, too.

He was making a solid effort to not wonder why she had been surprised he'd asked for it.

He was not going to let today unsettle him.

He wouldn't.

He had too much to do tomorrow, anyway.

----

Metal shod hooves walked crimson into the station.

Black iron creaked acid green and masked eyes stared unblinking.

East.

The head moved east and pulled, the peytral followed.

Dreams gleamed off broken barding.

East.

The ponies of Hollow Shades made a pointed effort to ignore the

Screaming.

Madness.

Addiction.

The same as it ignored them.

It's how little towns kept on keeping on in a world of magic and chaos after all.